5164 kms traveled so far
Stagnating at 36/200 kids sponsored. Help! Donate at http://happyharriet.co

Drove 6hrs through Georgia. Georgia is very much like India with less traffic. Same heat and humidity, cows on the road, random cars cutting in whenever they wish, no traffic rules and signs obeyed. Had to change clothes in the middle of the day because one set of clothes got drenched with sweat, just driving. Been drinking gallons of water and also using this as an excuse to eat ice cream at least once a day 😜
Had an interesting meal at a family-run eatery – the woman took us into the kitchen, showed us the ingredients one by one and we did a thumbs up and thumbs down until she understood we don’t eat animal products. Then she cheerfully presented us tomato & cucumber salad, bread and French fries, all of which we were happy to consume after being starved. While waiting we got the kids pictured here to sign the car. The little girl signed “IF”. Either she’s Rudyard Kipling’s rebirth or she’s an oracle making mysterious predictions about our future which will be made clear in hindsight. Not sure which 🤔

Once on the road, we got stalked by a Mazda SUV for a good 2 hrs. Just one guy in the car who would speed up just enough to cut in front of us and slow down. If we slowed down to 45, he would also slow down ahead of us, if we sped up to 75, he would also speed up to cut in front of us. Since there were many other cars on the road, with multiple random speeding up and slowing down moves, we deduced he was following us – maybe he was bored (but he didn’t make eye contact or smile or wave at us like most others do), or maybe he thought we would stop someplace – we are not sure. We kept our cool, made sure we took enough pictures and videos of him (he was using his face to cover his hands), and kept changing our speeds to stay with groups of cars. Finally shook him off in city traffic – with the classic use of right indicator to turn left 😂

Anitha drove through a hilly section with tons of traffic and mastered all forward gears. We are yet to check her half-clutching ability, but she’s good with full clutch and shifting through gears. 👏🏽

When she’s not driving, she’s navigating while figuring out how much further we can drive that day, looking up latest border crossing information, food to eat, where to stay, finding SIM cards, managing the money and currency exchanges etc etc etc. She also is an excellent “cleaner” (like the ones in Indian lorries) sticking her arm out and signaling we are turning/cutting in etc., and at some border crossings where other cars were being aggressive and cutting in front of us, she pretty much would stand in front of the car that’s trying to cut into our line, calmly directing Harriet to move ahead like a traffic policeman while the aggressor is forced to choose between running over her or getting in line behind us 😂

Having still not managed to get over 5hrs/night of sleep, we have decided to stay put in Tbilisi, Georgia tonight and tomorrow night.

Hoping to get some rest, but with 36/200 kids sponsored, I might be spending all of tomorrow typing out emails. If you were planning on donating, or sharing our journey with mailing lists you belong to, but just been putting it off, can you help out and do it soon? It would be amazing if we can send 200 kids to school instead of to work. Since our little journey seems to be interesting to people, we would love it if we could use it to make a difference in the lives of some kids. Donations can be made at http://happyharriet.co

Thank you for your support 🙏🏽